TanithT
First Post
You ask if I would find slavery or racism deserving of the benefit of the doubt. Well, if it's in the context of a fantasy setting where mass slaughter is harmless entertainment, then how can anything be taboo? Why is cheesecake so much more intolerable than carnage? Objectify a person for purposes of running a sword through their guts = no biggie, but objectify a person for purposes of titillation = unacceptably dehumanizing?
Depends on the group you're targeting. I don't think that telling stories about elf on Orc violence is likely to push many people's hot buttons, but how about a historically accurate Huckleberry Finn/Tom Sawyer based RPG where one of the fun adventures your PC's could participate in was hunting down, whipping and collecting bounty on escaped Negro slaves?
Somehow I get the feeling that you'd run into a shortage of African-American players who wanted to game with you. Because they're going to feel personally targeted by the depiction of their representational characters in the game, even though it's historically accurate. Actually, because it's historically accurate.
I'm stuck at the part where it's somehow reasonable to deem the entire hobby to be sexist. What is that *all* RPG publishers are doing that diminishes females?
I don't think anyone has yet claimed that the entire hobby *is* sexist. It's not. But I am telling the absolute truth when I say that if I pick up a random handful of RPG source material or sit down at a random open gaming table at a convention, in my experience, my chances of running into some pretty demoralizing stuff are high enough to make me uncomfortable.
The various examples of piggish behavior at the gaming table evoke outrage and sympathy. But are they representative of the entire hobby?
In what sense? Is it fair that it only takes one or two creepy, disrespectful guys at a gaming table to make a female gamer leave? Is it 'representational' if it's only one out of the six other guys at the table who won't quit asking how big her character's boobs are and if he can roll to have sex with her? By the numbers it's not, but she's leaving anyway, and she might not want to come back.
Or are we talking more Tanith's lines about the depiction of women geared up in "unsensible" ways that wouldn't fly in the SCA? Not just naked flesh, but having breasts molded into their armor, having armor that accentuates their figure? Is sexuality inherently sexist?
The question you have to ask is why they're dressed that way, how many of them are dressed that way, and how the men next to them are dressed, and what message overall that's likely to send to a woman at your gaming table.
There's a notable difference between idealized male sexuality and idealized female sexuality. The physical traits that make a guy hunk in the conventional sense--namely, height and brawn--are also those that make for a more formidable fighter. The same isn't true of women. So what do you do to address sexism? Downplay idealized women?
Sexism and sexual dimorphism are entirely different issues. You address sexism by not being sexist. What that means to you individually is going to vary, but I don't think it has to mean ignoring or downplaying the physical differences between the sexes.